Steel vs Aluminum scope bases.

I appreciate all of the technical info presented, as I am about as obsessive as the next guy on these kinds of things. If the one piece base appears to fit the receiver properly, as most of the brands presented from lower priced EGW to ones like Murphy's do, I just torque and mount signature zee's. No fuss no muss no problems to date. Any feedback on this strategy would be appreciated as I only shoot to 700 yds at present and may not experience it's shortcomings.

Wow. Some of you guys have put A LOT of thought into this subject and I've learned quite a bit from this thread. I've honestly never even thought to use a one piece base to add rigidity to the action. I like Talley lightweight rings and mounts. I don't feel like the extra ounce or two they save makes any real difference, but they seem solidly made and it seems like my scope would fail way before these mounts would. They have never lost zero on me and I think they have a real clean look to them. At around $40 bucks a set, I would definitely buy them again for another hunting rifle. If I ever got into benchrest shooting or very long range target shooting, then maybe a one piece steel base would be better. Thanks for all the knowledge guys!

I appreciate all of the technical info presented, as I am about as obsessive as the next guy on these kinds of things. If the one piece base appears to fit the receiver properly, as most of the brands presented from lower priced EGW to ones like Murphy's do, I just torque and mount signature zee's. No fuss no muss no problems to date. Any feedback on this strategy would be appreciated as I only shoot to 700 yds at present and may not experience it's shortcomings.

Since you asked for feed back... Here's some past correspondence between a few LR shooting friends that came up.

Was talking with shooting buddy Cliff tonight about his new F-Class rifle chambered for the 6.5/284. He had been testing some loads earlier in the day and was surprised he only had 32 minutes of elevation available after getting his 100 yard zero. Normally that would not be too far out of line except his Remington action was equipped with a Farrell 20 m.o.a. base along with Burris Signature Zee rings and +/- inserts that should have given him another 20 m.o.a. for a total of an additional 40 minutes over and above the 45 minutes of elevation available in his Nightforce NXS scope. This made no sense and I accused him of having a brain fart which caused him to reverse the Burris inserts when he mounted the scope. He of course denied this. We discussed other possible causes but always came back to the probability that it was an insert problem. We removed the scope, checked the inserts and found he had used them correctly as per their +/- markings.

Before we remounted the scope I used his digital calipers to check the thickness of the inserts and found the problem. Surprisingly three of the four inserts were marked incorrectly. Two of the (+) inserts should have been marked (-) and one of the (-) inserts was actually a (+). I suspect that many hundreds, if not thousands, of improperly marked inserts have been packaged by Burris waiting quietly to drive unsuspecting shooters crazy. Cliff will be talking to Burris about this tomorrow.

I have used both the 1” and 30mm Burris Signature Zee rings many times without difficulty and will continue to use them however I will be checking the inserts with my calipers before mounting the scope. I have not yet checked the thickness of the 1” inserts but a rough measurement of the 30mm inserts indicates the following;